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So, you’ve recently created a website. You managed to make it through the planning, design, development, and testing phases. You wrote all new content for your services pages, added new photos of the team, and even installed analytics. Time to relax, celebrate, and watch the leads flood your inbox, right? Wrong.

You’re just getting started. The following is a simple set of guidelines that will help you maintain a content-relevant website; one that draws in potential customers and gives them reasons to interact with your brand.

The obvious goal of any website is to attract visitors. In order for that to happen, users need to have a reason to visit. And that reason is quality, relevant content! Naturally, upon the launch of the website, you will already have some fresh new content on your site, usually in the form of your about us page, a blog, or employee bio’s. But is that sufficient? Not quite.(more…)

In a down economy, most companies begin to scrutinize ad spending, and are often are required to cut back on non-measurable advertising channels. In the search for marketing channels that provide reliable Return On Investment (ROI) figures, where do we look?

Enter Pay-Per-Click advertising. Also known as PPC. If you are new to this term, don’t worry. You probably know more about it than you think. PPC ads are the text-based ads that appear on the results page of any search you perform. You’ve probably seen them a million times on Google or Yahoo! or Bing. They usually take up the far right column, and sometimes can be seen at the top of the page too.

First let me say that PPC isn’t good for every company, nor is it always the right tool to use to market a new product or service. For instance, if you run a software company that makes a never-seen-before business-to-business application for education institutions, you would probably find that PPC doesn’t work as well as direct sales. If your product is highly technical, or if it requires a shift in thinking for your customer to “get it”, a small text-based ad probably won’t make the sale for you.

But for many companies (dare I say most companies?) running a PPC campaign through major search engines can provide incredibly accurate ROI in a time when spending is critical. During a recession, advertising dollars rightfully are directed toward performance-based marketing, such as paid internet advertising. Why? Because when cuts are needed, it’s easier to stick with results-driven channels that have a measurable ROI.

If you’ve ever been to a charity or corporate golf event, chances are the event was put on by Dallas golf event coordinators Tee Box Caddy. Envision helped to launch the new website and they are currently ranking on Page 1 of Google for their target keyphrases.

The website features a custom photo gallery that the client can update using a simple content management tool, as well as Flash and contact forms. Simple and effective.

SEO pays off. Just ask our client Baker & Company, a Dallas, TX CPA Firm focused on tax preparation and accounting for individuals and businesses. One year ago, Baker and Company’s website couldn’t be found for any of its target key-phrases. Today, they are ranking in the Top 10 for the search “Dallas CPA Firm“.

If Envision built a new website for you this year, we most certainly talked to you about the importance of making your website “Search Engine Friendly”. In our opinion, Search Engine Optimization became a mainstream term this year for most business owners. Although few know what it really takes to make a website optimized for search engines.

Put simply, SEO relates to building your website in such a way that search engines can properly index your website. It’s quite simple: there should be text on your website that is relevant to your company’s name and to the keywords or phrases that people will use to find the product or service that your business sells. That text should be present in 3 key places: the content on your website, the meta tags within your website’s HTML code, and the HTML itself.

Think about the last search that you made using Google or Yahoo Search. What did you search for? Let’s say you are in the market to buy a new house and need some help finding a great property in East Dallas. So, you search for “East Dallas Realtor”. If you look at the results for that search (go ahead, try it), the chances are that somewhere on the first page, you’ll find the website of Kay MacIntyre. And, if you click through to her website, you’ll find that her website has a lot of content that is relevant to your search phrase.

For example, you can see that the headline on the home page uses lots of relevant keyphrases:

And, you can see that the meta tag that generates the browser title uses the keywords “East Dallas Realtor”:

Of course, these are just a few of the dozens of reasons her site ranks well. Creating a search engine friendly website requires many extra steps, and certainly will increase the cost of any website project. But, if being “found” online is of important to you (if you’ve created a website in the first place, we’d like to assume it is), then you need to ensure that your website is built properly. This is a process we go through with every new customer, whether we are creating a website from scratch or taking over an existing site.

We encourage you to read future posts where we will dive deeper into “SEO” techniques and the affect they can have on your business.